Past Lives Future Lives

ISBN-13: 9780684832166

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Atria Books

Publication Date: 04-16-1998

Pages: 176

Product Dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.40(d)

Jenny Cockell is married and has two children. She lives and works as a chiropodist in Northamptonshire, England.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 3: Unfinished Business

The case for reincarnation

Most people's concerns about past and future are related purely to their present lives. But if the energy that is the soul is not destroyed at death, if we continue and return to live in a physical body over and over again, then both the past and the future are very much a personal concern.

Because of my personal experiences, I have never had any doubt about the reality of reincarnation. It is an expression of the immortality of the soul, which never ceases to exist but after death continues to rest in an altered state, returning later in a new body to start a new life. This conforms with the law of physics that states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. The recycling of the living energy that forms each of us is continuous and repeated, so that death becomes a change rather than an end, and birth a fresh start rather than a blank sheet.

Many ancient religious beliefs encompass this philosophy, in slightly different ways; what they have in common is the consciousness that how we live will affect what happens to us after death. In Hinduism the objective is to live in such a way as ultimately to be reunited with the absolute: the universal energy, Brahma, which is represented by the gods Brahma, Vishnu and Siva. Each life is judged by one's deeds, and it may take many, many lifetimes to reach the ultimate goal.

Buddhism has a similar objective, though with no reference to a god. It advocates following a way of life (the 'Noble Eightfold Path') whose aim is to free us from suffering and ultimately to achieve the state of Nirvana, in which we will merge with universal life and reincarnation will no longer be necessary.

It is less well known that reincarnation is an ancient and integral aspect of Judaism, and also originally of Christianity. Both the Essenes and the Pharisees, ancient sects, taught a belief in reincarnation, and it was accepted within Christianity for over five hundred years. It was only rejected, in an undemocratic and purely political move, by the Emperor Justinian at the Fifth Ecumenical Council in AD 553, after which it was regarded as heresy.

My own beliefs about the mechanisms of reincarnation tie up to some extent with those of the Eastern religions, particularly with Hinduism and Buddhism. I am certain that we are connected at some level with all life energy, and that after many lifetimes we return to the greater energy of which we are all just a part.

As my life has gone on I have found that people's attitudes towards reincarnation are becoming more open, but it is still a difficult idea for many Westerners to accept. However, there is an increasing body of research which suggests that it is a reality that can in some cases be proved. Not only do numbers of people remember their past lives, but on occasion their memories can be, and have been, backed up by external evidence. And since the mechanisms of nature — the patterns of birth, life and death — are always consistent, what is true for some people must be true for us all, whether we remember our past lives or not.

There are two main ways of demonstrating the reality of reincarnation. One is when evidence can be found to support the accounts of people who have described past lives under hypnosis. (I myself had recourse to hypnosis in my search for Mary Sutton's past, and during my sessions recalled several other past lives that I had not remembered spontaneously.) The most convincing demonstration, however, is the increasing number of children who talk spontaneously about past-life memories from a very early age, and are able to give specific details of those lives which can be verified. (It is also possible to recall past lives through meditation or working with dreams, but the memories that these methods produce are mainly emotional in content and lack the concrete details that researchers need to help in verification.)

There are now about 2500 documented cases of children whose descriptions of previous lives have been checked out by researchers; a number of these children have been able to contact and recognise their former families. Most of the work of research and documentation has been undertaken since 1960 by Professor Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia, and since 1979 by Dr Satwant Pasricha in India. In Claims of Reincarnation Dr Pasricha describes a number of cases of children mainly living on the Indian subcontinent, who have past-life memory. She has drawn some interesting statistical data from these studies.

The age at death in the previous lives was found to be consistently low. In Sri Lanka the average age at death of past-life claimants was 14, compared with a life expectancy of 61.7. In India the age at death averaged 34, compared with a life expectancy of 52.6. There was also a very high proportion of violent or sudden deaths.

The return period — that is, the time between death in the former life and birth in the current one — was found to be short in the majority of cases. In Turkey the return frequently took place in as little as nine months; in India the average return time was eighteen months, and for the Tlingit people of Alaska it was forty-eight months.

These short return times may be accounted for by the fact that the world population is continually growing. Although there are now more people on the planet than ever before, there is not necessarily more life energy. With so many new births, it may be that at the moment we are having to spend less time resting between lives than we once did. There is a considerable variation in return times among the people whose stories can be checked, but in the cases characterised by a strong memory the return period is often very short, sometimes less than a year.

Although some people describe past lives that took place fifty or a hundred years ago, we must not assume that this is the length of the gap between their lives; there may have been several other forgotten lives in the intervening period. My own main memory, Mary Sutton's life, ended twenty-one years before my birth, but there was another brief memory during the intervening years, which would make my own rest time approximately eight years between each life.

If the rest period has to adjust to the size of the population, it would be reasonable to expect an increasing number of children remembering previous lives, simply because there has been less time to forget one life before starting another. This could account for the increase in reported cases — although this could also be due to the increasing acceptability of reincarnation, which means that adults are more likely to take serious notice of children's claims.

Within the Buddhist tradition, it is interesting that the tracing of reincarnated Lamas usually occurs when the children concerned are still very young. Before his death each Dalai Lama (who is accepted as the reincarnation of the Buddha) describes where he can be found in his next incarnation, so that he may be restored to his former position. When he dies a search is made for a child in the specified area. When the right boy is thought to have been found, he is tested by being asked to identify his own previous life possessions from amongst a quantity of similar items such as small handbells and walking sticks. The present Dalai Lama is in his fourteenth incarnation and in each new life has had to pass stringent tests before being accepted and reinstated.

The same testing process is carried out for many other Lamas. One of the best-publicised recent tracings of a Lama was that of the revered senior Lama Ling Rinpoche, who died in 1984 and was recognised as being reincarnated in a boy born in 1985. The child, only twenty-one months old when found, unerringly picked items that had belonged to his former self. He even recognised and greeted former friends and demonstrated the same personality traits and mannerisms as his former self.

Lamas, however, are not expected to retain full previous-life memory into adulthood. This conforms with Dr Pasricha's research; she noted that many of the documented children began to forget their past lives at around six years old. At this age children are usually becoming actively integrated into their present environment, going to school and acquiring all sorts of new interests. So forgetting the previous life may be a part of normal development, allowing the adaptation to society that is necessary for personal development.

In fact it appears that clear memories only survive into adulthood when there is a very strong emotional tie with the past life, such as a violent death or a sense of some important issue that has not been resolved. This may be one reason why I never forgot my own unresolved previous lives — though a certain stubbornness of personality may also have been responsible.

It is curious that even very powerful recall can begin to fade when the present life becomes more insistent. In some cases this may be because the children concerned have been able to contact their past-life families. One might think that bringing the families together would reinforce a child's memories, but presumably the meeting enables them to resolve any feelings of 'unfinished business' so that the importance of the previous life diminishes. Frequently those who have been reunited with the previous-life family while still very young have gone on to forget and let go of that past life.

Because it is likely that all children retain some snatches of memory from previous lives, such things are liable to affect preferences or behaviour. Young children, typically around the age of four, may demonstrate behavioural traits that are not to do with their present environment. This should not be considered abnormal; it is a very common feature of past-life memory. Most of the children who were investigated demonstrated play activities that had some connection with the previous life — just as I enjoyed sweeping and cleaning as a small child. In addition, many suffered from fears related to their past memories, such as a fear of water following a death by drowning.

As well as acting out their memories, some of these children demonstrated skills that they had had no opportunity to learn in their current lives, including such things as knowing how to drive or speaking a foreign language. It is not unusual for children to display particular abilities without actually having complete memories of former lives; the skill itself may indeed be all that remains of the past experience, but this would certainly explain why some people develop special interests or skills at a remarkably early age.

It seems that the child prodigy in particular does not need to retain detailed past-life memories to be able to draw on a retained skill. I remember a girl at school who greatly surprised not only her audience but herself when she sang alone for the first time: her voice sounded as though she had received a full operatic training.

Music is just one of the skills that can appear in full flower in young children with little or no teaching. A supreme example was Mozart, who began his musical career when he was four and was touring Europe at the age of six. It seems very possible that such prodigies are relearning a skill rather than learning it for the first time. In a few cases there appears to be no learning process at all: the skill is simply there.

Raymond De Felitta, for example, played the piano for the first time in 1971 at the age of six; he found to his delight — and to his parents' consternation — that his fingers were 'doing it themselves'. What his fingers were doing was playing jazz in the style of the great Fats Waller, who died in 1945. 'Blind Tom' Wiggins of Georgia, though apparently educationally subnormal and with a limited vocabulary, was playing the piano like a professional from the age of four with no lessons.

Other child geniuses have included John Stuart Mill, the nineteenth-century philosopher and economist, who knew Greek at the age of three. Jean-Louis Cardiac, born in France in 1719, knew the alphabet at three and could translate Latin at four; sadly, he died at seven. The Cuban world champion chess player, Jose Capablanca, was playing brilliantly and winning games against adult opponents at the age of four.

Much of the recent interest in past-life research was inspired by a remarkable investigation which took place in India nearly seventy years ago. The story of Shanti Devi is perhaps the earliest case of reincarnation to be seriously investigated and widely publicised. It also includes most of the features listed in Dr Pasricha's statistics.

Shanti Devi was born in Delhi in 1926. At the age of four she started to talk about her 'other life', comparing the clothes she wore now with those she had worn 'before'. She described details of her life as someone called Lugdi who had lived in Muttra, 80 miles (130 km) away, and who died ten days after the birth of a son. Shanti asked to return to Muttra to see her family, and eventually a letter was sent to Kedar Nath Chaubey, Lugdi's widower.

Kedar Nath wrote back saying that much of what Shanti had said was true. He asked a friend in Delhi to visit the family to find out more, and eventually decided to visit Shanti himself. Shanti was nine years old when Kedar Nath visited Delhi on 13 November 1935 with his young son. During an emotional meeting Shanti Devi recognised Kedar Nath and spoke of their life together with such conviction and accuracy that he was convinced that she had indeed been his late wife, who had died in 1925 at the age of twenty-three.

As a result of the ensuing publicity a committee was formed to conduct an investigation, and it was decided to take Shanti Devi to Muttra. On arriving at the station she recognised her former father-in-law and parents amongst the crowd. She directed the carriage driver to her previous home, pointing out local landmarks on the way. Inside the house, she was able to describe the former furnishing and layout (Kedra Nath no longer lived there, and these had been changed). She looked for 150 rupees that she had hidden, and when she couldn't find them Kedar Nath admitted that he had found the money and taken it. Shanti Devi expressed maternal feelings towards her previous son and reacted to all other family members with obvious recognition and affection.

This case is important because of the high proportion of correct details given and because there was an investigation before the two families met. Of the 2500 cases documented to date, only some twenty-five of the children were independently interviewed before meeting their previous-life families, which gives leeway for the suggestion that they could have learned some of the details of their past lives from these families.

Another remarkable and much more recent case which has some similar features is that of Titu Singh, born in 1986 in the village of Baad in India. He was two and a half years old when he began to talk about a previous life which ended violently with his murder. He claimed to have been Suresh Verma, with a wife called Uma and two children, Ronu and Sonu; he had owned a radio and TV shop in Agra. Initially his family was disbelieving, but eventually he convinced them enough for them to send his oldest brother to the town of Agra, 8 miles (13 km) away. There he found the shop, named Suresh Radio, and met the widowed Uma.

Titu's brother explained to Uma why he had come, and she visited his family the next day. Titu immediately recognised her and called out to his parents that his 'other family' had arrived. After talking with Uma and Suresh Verma's parents Titu's family decided to find out more. When he was about six Titu was taken to the shop in Agra, where he commented on changes that had been made, such as the presence of new shelves. He greeted Uma, and reminded her of past events in their married life; she finally accepted, with some anguish, that he was the reincarnation of her late husband. Titu subsequently recognised the two children amongst a group playing in the street.

A fascinating detail in this case is that Titu bears a birthmark on his head where he says the bullet hit him; it is in exactly the same spot as the wound located in the autopsy report on Suresh Verma. In 1992 Titu appeared in an Agra court and convinced the authorities that he was a murder victim, naming his murderer!

In a BBC documentary shown in March 1990 in the Forty Minutes series, Titu's two families met and were interviewed. When I saw the programme, what struck me was the difficulties involved when someone has two lives and wants to try to live them both. At the time I was engaged in trying to trace my own past-life family; I was encouraged by the programme, but very aware of the emotional problems it could bring up.

Both Shanti Devi and Titu Singh had done what I was trying to do: they had recovered that which had been lost. But it became clear that in some ways this can hold one back. Shanti Devi never married; she always felt married to Kedar Nath Chaubey, even though he had taken a second wife. Titu Singh felt strongly drawn to his past and to his previous parents, which must have made his present parents very uneasy. This sense of being pulled in two different directions is an integral part of such memories; this very tension may be one reason why the memories continue into the present.

Past-life memories that are retrieved under hypnosis do not seem to require the same sense of an unresolved past, except when used in therapy. The memories that surface during hypnotic regression have normally been forgotten because the subject has been able to let go of that former life — which I believe is what should happen. Even so, the memories that are easiest to access under hypnosis are those entailing a sense of the unresolved. Our past is a part of us, and if we consider that we have many lives then the memory of those lives must also be a part of us. This suggests that memory is not just stored in the physical brain but forms an integral part of the spirit.

Although most of the documented research has been carried out in the East, where the notion of reincarnation is culturally acceptable, more cases are now arising of Western children remembering past lives. This may be because parents today are more willing to listen to what their children tell them without belittling their statements — even if they don't necessarily believe them.

In The Children That Time Forgot Mary Harrison describes how she placed an advertisement in a women's magazine asking for mothers to contact her if they had had any odd experiences with young children. She was expecting to collect light-hearted anecdotes for a book; instead she received hundreds of letters about children who reported details of previous lives. The common phrase used by the children was 'when I was here before'. The stories they told were consistent in their detail; they did not change or become embellished with each retelling, despite the youth of the children concerned.

Mary also notes that some children were able to remember the time between lives and waiting to be conceived. There was an energy barrier that was frequently described as being like a river that had to be crossed. Dr Peter Fenwick of the Institute of Psychiatry in London has carried out brainwave readings of unborn children and concluded that before birth the patterns were identical to those of an adult when dreaming, suggesting that babies dream while still in the womb. Yet our dreams are usually stimulated by experiences, past and present. In an unborn child with no present-life experiences, the mental images likely to stimulate dreams might well relate to previous lives or the time between lives.

When each of my children was born I automatically looked at them in order to see who they had been before. I had done this for friends, often quite spontaneously, for several years, so I was not at all bothered when after a little concentration I could see another face superimposed over the face of my baby. With this glimpse, as on those previous occasions, I also picked up fragmented images that related to those former lives.

Although I told Steve and my mother about the pasts I had seen for them, I never mentioned them to either of the children. I preferred to wait and see if they remembered anything for themselves and whether this would match what I had seen. In addition, I feel very strongly that children should be encouraged to develop their own points of view, so I didn't discuss my views on reincarnation and past lives with them until they were old enough to ask for my opinion and consider their own.

I saw my son as a young soldier in Europe, possibly France. At the age of two he himself used to talk animatedly about mountaineering, describing and naming mountaineering equipment. Without mentioning previous lives, I carefully asked if he thought he had ever lived near a mountain. His answer was immediate: 'No, but a friend of mine did.' I left it at that and eventually he spoke no more about climbing. A few years later he had forgotten all about the experience and now has no recall of it.

My daughter also apparently had a past life in Europe: I saw her as a grandmother in one of the Baltic states, dressed in black and surrounded by a large and loving family. As a toddler, Heather would dress as a lady by placing a shawl over her head and crossing it on her body in the style of a middle European peasant of older times. When she helped me make pastry she would twist it into shapes which reminded me of biscuits I had seen many years earlier at a Latvian festival. Because these were play activities rather than conscious memories, Heather did not associate them with a past life.

Why are a few people apparently able to remember past lives while the majority seem to forget? It is likely that most children have a fractional memory of previous lives, but normal integration into the present makes it possible for them to forget these as they grow up. This is liable to be the norm, so that adults who recall past lives are in the minority. It is extremely unusual for someone to retain a detailed memory of a previous life into adulthood; this perhaps would require a combination of an unresolved past, together with a tenacious personality.

Case studies suggest that, when memories persist, there is a strong emotional commitment to the past life. In virtually all of the child cases studied there was a sudden and premature end to the life, and a sense of unfinished business. These children may also have brought with them a strong sense of responsibility or guilt, or the anguish of separation from a loved family. They may also have a determination to remember that would explain why such children need to reinforce their memories by talking about them and re-enacting them in games.

These factors were evident in the case of Shanti Devi and Titu Singh, particularly the sense of loss and unfinished business. They were at the root of my drive to search for Mary Sutton's family, and also featured in my other remembered lives.

The other lives that I have always remembered from childhood have affected my present life almost as much as the memories of Mary. My second most prevalent past-life memory was as a young girl in Japan. It is a life I found difficult to talk about until recently, because it too brought to the surface in me a sense of failed responsibility.

The time was around the middle of the nineteenth century (I have somehow always had an inner knowledge of when my past lives took place). I was one of the children of a well-to-do family living near a small fishing village on the north-west coast of the southern island of Japan. Further north was a larger community where I was not permitted to travel alone. We lived in an attractive home on the hillside above the village and we children were not allowed to mix with the working people whose small dwellings crowded close to the shore, near the clusters of fishing boats. I don't recall being required to work and my life was very calm and ordered, if rather restricted.

When I was about seventeen my father took me to the town to the north. We travelled by boat; it was bigger than the tiny fishing vessels of the village, but nevertheless crowded. I was to meet an influential man whom my father had arranged for me to marry, so the trip was quite an excitement. But when we finally reached our destination I felt uncomfortable with the place; I was not used to the crowds, and the town was far less beautiful than our hillside home.

When I met the man I was to marry, my depression was compounded. I knew he was a good match as far as the family was concerned, for he had an excellent position, but he was old and not at all attractive. While my father and the old man spoke and made arrangements, I was taken to another room. We were in a large house; I was not sure if it was my fiance's home or whether it belonged to the family of the elderly female relative who sat with me in near-silence while the men carried out their negotiations. I had only been in the room with my husband-to-be for a few minutes, and had spoken only to answer a few polite questions about the journey. Later in the day we left and stayed somewhere else before the return trip.

My father brought me back home to prepare for the wedding. It had all been agreed and, as a dutiful Japanese daughter, I had no say in the decision. I felt frustrated and depressed; I had to do what my father wanted because to disobey would be to dishonour him. I simply had no right to refuse the marriage; my father had chosen well and struck a good bargain. But although refusal was unthinkable, deep down that was what I wanted to do. I felt ashamed that such a rebellious thought could even cross my mind, but at least I had sufficient respect for my father to hide my feelings.

Soon I was on the boat again, this time destined for my wedding. I knew that I had to go, in obedience to my father — an obedience soon to be transferred to my new husband. We were within sight of land towards the journey's end when the boat collided with a small fishing vessel; the crew of the smaller boat were too busy arguing with each other to notice that they were heading for an accident.

There was a fairly substantial thud. The passengers were crowded together, some standing, and on impact several of us were thrown into the water. Because I hadn't been allowed to play with the village children I had never learned to swim, but I should have been close enough to the boat to be pulled out of the water. Somehow, that isn't what happened.

I remember a brief moment of absolute panic, followed by a sense of dissociation as my body fell limply down through the water. The transition from unconscious body to a spirit free from the body went almost unregistered: I just seemed to move quite naturally into a state where there was no fear. I didn't look back to see if my body was still sinking, but was drawn towards what seemed to be an anti-clockwise swirling in the water above me. I recognised this as death and freedom, and offered no resistance as I was drawn into the vortex and peace.

Although this death enabled me to escape from a life I didn't want, I had always carried a great sense of guilt about dying then, as if I had deliberately chosen to die rather than following the path of duty and responsibility. Recently, however, I was involved in a discussion about a drowning which had happened in a very similar way. I was told that sometimes when people hit the water the shock causes them to breathe in deeply, filling their lungs with water. Weighed down in this way, they tend to sink without resurfacing.

At this point in the conversation my death in Japan flashed into my mind, and I suddenly found myself in tears. For all these years I had felt guilty and responsible for what had been purely an accident. At last I was able to forgive myself and understand that it was time to let go of the feelings that had hurt from several lifetimes ago.

Similarly, I had also felt guilty about dying as Mary, which was a major reason for my search for her family. I was finally able to go through a similar release from that guilt when I realised at last that she was in no way to blame for her death. Thus it is possible to see a pattern emerging over more than one life that expresses a continuity of the personality.

Oddly enough, probably my oldest memory in time is also the happiest. Far from being concerned with unfinished business, it is imbued with a great sense of completion and fulfilment. This memory has been with me from childhood.

I was a young man and had been away from my village for a long time, probably hunting. My main image from that time is of walking over the last hill before reaching home, and seeing the collection of small round huts clustered by the shore of a great lake. I was alone and returning with a great sense of triumph.

The land around was very green and the weather mild. Beyond the lake I could see mountains to the right and to the left a forest that would take uncountable days to cross, if it could be crossed at all. I could see no fields or obvious signs of cultivation; most of the land seemed to be forested.

My clothing was of animal hide but it was soft and supple, carefully stitched. I carried all that I needed for survival and valued each small possession in an almost mystical way. In my present life I tend to surround myself with clutter; the simplicity of my possessions in that earlier life gave me a great sense of freedom.

This snatch of time may have been pre-Celtic; the image is certainly a very ancient one. The Celts, who were farmers and weavers, arrived in Britain about 600 BC.